Learning to roll a kayak requires a bit of practice. For a few paddlers, it may take only 15 minutes of in-water experience and drilling before they successfully roll up on their own. More often it takes weeks, sometimes months, of steady practice to do those first rolls without assistance. For many paddling enthusiasts, learning to roll would be a lot easier if there was a way to avoid hanging upside down underwater. I have developed some exercises using the Swiss (or stability) ball that will improve range of motion and strengthen the muscle groups involved in the kayak roll.
The Swiss ball has recently become a popular tool for health and fitness enthusiasts to improve overall musculoskeletal fitness. If you don’t have one, they’re easy enough to find in sports and fitness stores and are very affordable. The exercises here are not intended to take the place of a good instructor and logical progression of on-water drills, but should be considered as introductory exercises for rolling. Also, it’s best to combine these exercises with a safe fitness program. (The following exercises are recommended for healthy individuals. If you have any orthopedic injuries or other problems, consult your physician before starting this or any other exercise program.)
In the kinesiology class I teach at Montana Tech, I conduct a three-part kayak-rolling lesson that consists of viewing a rolling video, dry-land exercises using the Swiss ball, and a pool session. I offer the following “kayak challenge” to the students: If they can successfully complete an on-the-water roll on their first attempt (meaning no preliminary in-boat exercises) after studying the biomechanics of the roll and practicing with the Swiss ball, they receive an A for the final exam. If it takes two attempts, they get a B; three attempts, a C; four attempts, a D; and five attempts or beyond, they receive an F for the final. Last year, only two students accepted the challenge. Both rolled up the very first time in the kayak, much to the awe and envy of the other students. They continued to roll about 50 more times on both sides throughout a two-hour pool session. The students who didn’t accept the challenge all eventually succeeded in rolling, which suggests that the Swiss ball exercises create a useful step in learning to roll a kayak.
The Swiss ball exercises, like the C-to-C roll they are aimed at, can be broken down into three phases: the set-up, the sweep and the hip snap. The three-dimensional nature of the exercises allows each of these phases to be mimicked. Your body position will not be exactly as it is in the boat and may feel a little awkward as a result. An in-water roll will cause the boat to roll upright underneath you with your pelvic girdle rotating underneath your relatively stationary torso. In contrast, this land-based exercise results in your torso moving to the upright position over the more stationary pelvic girdle, so visualizing where the surface of the water is during the Swiss ball exercise can be difficult. The surface doesn’t remain stationary—it moves as you move through the hip snap. At the beginning, you’ll find it easier to focus just on the body mechanics and the curving of the spine, first one way, then the other.
The Set-Up
As shown in photo 1, sit on the Swiss ball facing the wall with the balls of your feet pressed into the angle between the floor and the wall. You can use a length of dowel to simulate a paddle shaft, or just hold your hands in front of you as if you were holding a paddle.
Rotate 90 degrees to the wall and imagine yourself sitting in a kayak oriented parallel to the wall. This position, shown in photo 2, approximates the position you’d be in while seated upright in a kayak (even though your legs are twisted sideways toward the wall). It also approximates the relaxed position upside down after a capsize. The paddler in the photo is shown turning to the left, but you should practice the exercise turning to the right as well.
Imagine yourself capsized and setting up for the roll. Move the paddle parallel to the side of your imaginary kayak. Stabilize yourself with your feet where the wall and floor meet, and let the Swiss ball roll under you and support you as you twist. Your shoulders should be turned down toward the floor.
Push the dowel toward the floor, imagining you’re pushing the paddle skyward through the surface of the water. The working blade of the paddle—the blade you’d roll up with—would be pointing forward, toward the bow of your imaginary kayak.
This position can be used as a stretching exercise to help kayakers who lack flexibility to achieve the optimal position prior to starting the sweep. It will also help maintain flexibility of some of the muscles of the hip, the obliques and the low back and make them less prone to injury.
The Sweep
During the sweep phase, the paddle swings to a 90-degree angle to the kayak, or nearly so, and the hand on the “working” side of the paddle moves away from the wall. (See -photos 4 and 4a.) One forearm is positioned near the forehead while the other pushes up and across the hull of the kayak. Keep the top of your head pointing toward the floor while rotating so that your chest and face now face forward toward the bow of the imaginary kayak. Feel free to hang out in this position, using it to stretch the abdominals, the erector spinae (the large muscles that run along the spine) and the hips.
Hip Snap
During the hip snap of the C-to-C roll, the erector spinae on the high side of the spine (the right side in the photos) work together with the rectus abdominis and the obliques on that same side to rotate the boat to an upright position underneath the boater. On the Swiss ball, raise your head while facing forward, as shown in photo 5. At the end of this movement, the top of your head should be pointing toward the wall rather than up toward the ceiling. (See photo 6.) This posture mimics the head-down position at the end of the hip snap. From here, straighten up on the ball, starting with your lower back and bringing the spine to vertical from the bottom up. Keep your head pushed toward your wall-side shoulder until your back is upright and only then bring your head to a vertical position.
The motion here is the same as it is during an actual roll, but because your body—instead of your kayak—is rotating, the surface of the water is not a fixed reference point. Instead of thinking about flipping the kayak from upside down to right-side up, think about prying the plane of the water’s surface from upside down, pulling it up from one side of the Swiss ball as if it were stuck to the top of your head and flicking down to the floor on the other side.
To train for a sweep roll, simply combine the sweep and hip-snap moves that are done sequentially in the C-to-C exercise. Instead of sweeping and hip snapping in two separate phases, you’ll be sweeping and hip snapping all in one phase.